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Cassette 6: for Oleta/Transcript
This is the official transcript for the episode which can also be accessed for free at'' patreon.com/withinthewires'' Let’s talk about the first time I saw you. The first time I saw you after the the 10-Year Sessions and Pharmaceutical Regimen. The first time I saw you after I had been made to forget you. You were outside on an autumn day. You should always be outside on an autumn day. You were far away from me - on the other side of a crowded courtyard - but I knew it was you. The Sessions had not allowed me to remember you, but in that moment I did. I remembered everything, not in the distance, but all in the here and now. Feelings of years before suddenly fresh and brutal in the present, as if all of early childhood re-experienced in one autumn afternoon. So. Let’s talk about all the things I had forgotten about you, until that moment. I had forgotten that you laugh as if you’re getting away with something. You often were getting away with something, but even when you weren’t, even when there was nothing to be getting away with, you laughed like you’d won. As if the joke is even funnier because someone, somewhere, doesn’t want you to enjoy it. As if the joke has been delivered to you in private, along secret channels, and hearing it, laughing at it, is some kind of rebellion. This isn’t how you feel, of course, you know there is no one who does not want you to enjoy a joke, now and again, there is no one who does not want you to laugh. Non-violent laughter is healthy and encouraged. But it is just the way you look, you understand, it is something about your eyes that hints at subversion. I had forgotten the way you like to examine things closely, how you wanted to understand everything. Picking flowers and obsessing over them - examining each petal as you pulled it away, seeing the veins running through it - useless, now, but unaware they are useless now. I had forgotten how quickly you talk tripping over your words, as if your thoughts have run ahead of you and you are scrambling to keep up. I had forgotten that sometimes your thoughts would change direction suddenly, sharply, and your words wouldn’t notice for a couple of sentences, until suddenly they were brought up short, and you would fall silent, stunned, as you recalibrated your route. You always had a route, a path, a plan, a direction. I had forgotten that when you listen to someone else talk, you stare at them as if trying to understand more than just their words. I had forgotten you were curious. I had forgotten you were vivid. I had forgotten you. And then. Then I had not. The memories of you did not return to me - suddenly they had never left at all, although they had not been there the moment before. I saw you, outside on an autumn day, and there you were, in my mind, iterated many times. So. Let’s talk about the last memory I have of you, from before The Sessions, before the Regiment. The last memory before years of nothing, the last memory of you before the first memory of you - outside on an autumn day. You were nine. You were nine years and eleven months and 29 days old. I was also nine. I was nine years and seven months and four days old. You didn’t talk much that day. It was weird that you didn’t talk much, and I didn’t like it. It scared me and made me angry, so I yelled at you and ran away. You followed me as I went through the garden and across the small stream and into the little orchard we liked to pretend was a magic forest. "Hester," you called, because that was the name the Companions had given me. No one calls me by my name anymore. I did not say anything because I just wanted to hear your voice again. "Hester," you said, quieter. I waited as you said it a few more times, the T so proper, so well-tutted. "Hester," you said one last time before giving up your search. Behind the bushes, I seethed and sobbed, because this is how misunderstandings work when you are nine years, seven months, and four days old. It is sometimes how misunderstandings work now. Later that day, I came to apologize, but I just stared at the floor and asked "you want to play in the Sand Sphere? You nodded and we did. You still didn’t talk much and I was still scared and angry, bordering on jealous. We stayed together all day, and after a while I didn’t talk either. After we were all put to bed, I snuck out to find you. I went to your room and put my ear to the door to see if I could heard you. I could not. I scratched lightly on the door, like I often did when I wanted to sneak out at night with you, to look for glow worms or stare at stars. I waited for you to call me in. I scratched but you did not open the door. Slowly, I turned the door knob, and pushed open the door. I stepped into your room, and it was empty. There were no sheets on the bed, no books on the shelf. The closet door was ajar and there were no clothes inside. "Oleta" I said your name quietly, tutting my T, emulating you, your fine diction, which always drew the attention of the Trainers and Caretakers. You may as well have never been there. I kept my memories of you for another four months and 27 days. I played in the garden and the caretakers told me off for talking to myself. For over-enunciating my Ts. I wasn’t talking to myself. I was talking to you. I was telling you stories, I was describing to you things I saw and imagined and thought. I was imagining a world where you were still listening to me. Staring at me as if to hear something more than my words. I talked to you, pretending you could hear me, for four months and 27 days. I remembered you for four months and 27 days. And then I went through the Sessions and the Regiment. And I did not remember you anymore. I remember going to school. I learned about art and I traveled the world. I saw thousands of faces - some painted, some flesh, but I did not see your face. Not even with the eye of my mind. It was full of information, and full of colour, full of knowledge and life, but all that was wasted, because it was empty of you. So, let’s talk about the first time I saw you after the Sessions. The Institute was interested in art history, studying humans as eclectic cultural phenomena, as trends and series of aesthetic choices. The Institute believes in people as art. And so we study a cloud of dark hair and the way a person laughs as if she is getting away with something. We study most people from a distance, broad swaths and points of color, but some people require a closer look into their individual brush strokes. So we bring them closer. We bring them to a building in a forest, near a river, beyond the mountains, along a scar-shaped road that leads to a city. We choose these subjects carefully, and we study them closely. You were chosen carefully. I chose you carefully. You are studied closely. I study you closely. But it does not work. A painting is designed to be put on a wall, static and still, safely indoors, never changing or moving. It waits there for people to see it. For people to study and contemplate it, to form opinions on why it is beautiful, and what it teaches us. But how does a painting change when placed next to a complementary or contradictory work? Alone, static and still, on a stark white wall, carefully-labelled and observed, a work of art is simply a relic, a file folder of medical analysis. What is a Georgia O'Keeffe when academically studied on a white wall, but a flower and a series of words which strip-mine eroticism from technique and intent. Analysis forcibly extracts feelings as words. What is a Georgia O'Keeffe when placed in a garden or a bedroom? When it reminds you of someone. What is a Georgia O'Keeffe when the only one who can see it is someone who feels it and knows it? People are beautiful because of where they are placed, and where they are placed is beautiful because people are in it. Not everyone understands art. Not everyone needs to. But everyone foolishly thinks if they just found the right words, they could. Just place the painting on a white wall, in a large hall, and give them a pen and pad. But a girl with a cloud of dark hair, a girl who laughs as if she is getting away with something should not be against a white wall. She belongs outside on an autumn day. So we must get her out of there. # # # SIDE B - THE FUTURE How is this music? I chose it, although admittedly there are few reasonable alternatives here in the Cassette Programs Library. Like this: that is deep and disturbing and not music at all or this: tone Most of this music has subliminal messaging in it. Although, the messages are basically things like "relax" and "everything is fine," which are at best helpful to my cause, and at worst innocuous. So I went with this. Hope you like it. pause I looked at your files. I have read them thoroughly, many times. I know what you have done, in the years since we turned ten and progressed through the Sessions and the Regiment. I know you were sent to a school to learn about electricity. You learned how to transfer elemental power into ground wires and into homes and grids for artificial needs. You spent years learning this, and then you spent years putting it into practice, drawing angular diagrams, balancing equations, and filling out paperwork for approvals. I know that you stayed, always, in the same place. While I was sent far away, to explore and explain galleries of art in other places, you stayed, always, in the same place. So. Let’s talk about the places I can show you. I have been many places that I thought were beautiful, at the time. At the time I thought they were beautiful and important, at the time I thought they were perfect. And then I saw you and remembered you and then when I remembered the beautiful, important, perfect places I had been, they seemed to me to be empty and grey. The Sessions and the Regiment failed me. Seeing you again flushed the color from my memories. Seeing you again should have done nothing. Registered nothing. I lived, for a while, in a cottage on the sea, on the edges of a small town. The town was not important, except for one small collection of work by an artist who was born there. The paintings would be seen by more people if they were given to a proper gallery in Paris or London or Madrid, but they were all that is important to this town, so the town has kept them as they had kept the artist, so I lived, for a while close to the town hoping to learn more of the artist and her work, there in a cottage on the sea. There were other cottages on the sea, but they were not close to mine. I would go for walks along the beach, and see people in the distance, with their dogs, and their other people. They would wave, but they would not come to say hello. Sometimes the dogs did, and I liked them more than the people. It was peaceful and the sea was wild and it was a good place to live, for a while. The artist passed away, and her paintings were put in a gallery behind lasers and locked doors. And I was unable to convince publishers of her import, all these paintings on dull white walls. I want to take you to that cottage on the sea, on the edges of the small town with nothing to it but some paintings that few people have seen, but that are very important to those who have. We would walk along the beach and hopefully see people and more hopefully their dogs. We would read and talk and sit quietly together, and I would cook for you. Simple, good, real meals, made with fresh, real capsicums and oranges and bright green herbs. I would not take you there first. The cottage by the sea, near the paintings and the dogs, would be our destination, a palace of peace, a place and time where all that remains to do is to breathe together and eat together and listen to our own skin. Can you hear your own skin. Breathe with me. And listen. inhales slowly Skin remembers more than we think. Before the cottage, I would take you to all the places I loved. All the places I thought, at the time, were beautiful and perfect, that were made dreary and cold by the absence of you. I would make the places beautiful and perfect and important again. I would tell you of the times I spent there, the things I learned and the things I taught, and you would listen to me, as if you were trying to hear more than just my words. I would tell you the amusing anecdotes I have from my travels, and you would laugh, looking like you were getting away with something. And you would be getting away with something. We would both be getting away with something. We would both be getting away with somebody. I sometimes wonder what would be different if we had not forgotten each other. If we had not been made to forget each other. Would we still have gone to our separate, different schools, to learn such different things? Are circuit diagrams beautiful to you? Will you draw one for me some day? Would you have stayed where you were, always? Would you have been safer if you had left? Would I have wandered so far away for so long? Would I have been brought back to work for The Institute? Would you have been brought here to be observed and wondered at? Would I have had to find a way to get you out of The Institute, and take you through the world from place to place, cautiously from hillside to wood to valley, until we arrived at a cottage on the sea, on the outskirts of a small town? I will get you out of here. I am getting you out of here. You should not be here, you should not have to be here, so you should get out. You have to be careful. It will be difficult. It will be dangerous. It will be worth it. And then we will be together and everywhere we go will be beautiful, and important, and perfect. You will make everywhere we go beautiful, and important, and perfect. We will eat peppers and herbs. We will touch our fingers together and breathe. In. And out. And we will remember everything that happens to us. And we will forgive everything that came before. I hope that we can forgive. Of course, there are always things to forgive. I will tell you about this later. Just remember to breathe. You have completed Cassette... what cassette is this? Six? Six, I guess. Go ahead and destroy this one. Tell your security nurse you lost it. This is taking too long. I didn’t want this to take this long. Do you trust me? Did you listen, remember, comprehend? Do you remember times and hallways, cameras and doors. Do you comprehend paths and waterfalls? Do you know what a cedar tree smells like? I trust I have been clear about times and places. I trust that you have trusted my voice. 2:05am. I want you to grab whatever you can and run, I want to get you out, I want to see you somewhere else, both of us free and full of memory, I don’t want to wait anymore. Category:Transcripts